Chapter 1
“Pleasing your son turns you on.”
Marion Page was a single mother of one. Her son, Tom, was just turning one, and Marion’s mother was looking after him while she stepped out to gather food for the party.
It was the last party she would ever throw him.
She shook her head, as if shying away from a fly, and headed back to her car. What an odd thought. Of course she wanted to look after her son – his father may have been long gone, but Marion had resolved to be the best possible mother she could be. He was her world, and she was determined to return the favour.
She dismissed it from her (conscious) mind, and it wasn’t until that night, when she saw the look of joy on her son’s face that it returned.
Watching her young child happily open presents, she couldn’t help but be aware that her heartrate had increased, her skin was flushed. It was true – pleasing her son turned her on.
Marion made an excuse to leave the room, and sank back against a wall. What was wrong with her??
The next few months, she claimed illness. Any excuse to be away from her son, she took. Her parents took it as the long-overdue grieving process finally catching up, and happily looked after young Tom for her. She tried everything – she read, she went out with friends, she painted. But all the time, the thought never escaped her. “Pleasing your son turns you on.”
Had I seen the first years of Tom’s life, I can honestly say that I would never have gone near his mother, never have meddled. I’m many things, but I’m not cruel, and as much as I love playing with people, they always leave me happier that we’ve met.
Not three months after our meeting, tragedy struck the Pages once more. Both of Marion’s parents, killed in a car accident. Mercifully, Tom was at home with his mother at the time, but she no longer had an excuse, had no one else to turn to.
Her resolve, looking back through her memories, impressed me. “Pleasing your son turns you on” was in constant battle with the other phrase that defined her, one that no one had externally placed in her mind “I am a good mother.”
The compromise her confused mind reached was simple. She did everything she could to set Tom up for a good life – she made sure he ate well, exercised regularly, had lots of friends. She sent him to a good school and taught him everything that she felt he needed to know to succeed in life. She was as caring and nurturing as any mother has been, but with one difference – she made sure that nothing she did brought him direct joy.
Once she learned what his favourite meal was, she never cooked it for him. She deprived him of the TV shows he liked, didn’t allow him to have friends over, never gave him sweets or hugs or sang him to sleep at night. She was the best mother one could be, while simultaneously making his life a misery.
She slipped, once or twice throughout the years. She absentmindedly patted him on the head affectionately once, when he was five, but the spread of warmth throughout her body when she saw him smile got her attention, and she never made that mistake again. She went along to each of his school plays, but after his beaming face spotted her in the crowd, the wetness that followed was like a kick in the stomach, and she never risked it again.
But constantly being on guard like that, deliberately having to deprive your son, that changes a person. And over the years, Marion became more and more bitter. It was done out of love for her son – a good mother, she knew, should not find her own son a turn-on, and constantly making sure that he never got an ounce of pleasure from her, it turned Marion into a harsh and hostile person.
Placing a thought into someone’s head is an interesting gambit. Once it’s out of your hands, the possibilities for interpretation are endless. “Pleasing your son turns you on” had, in Marion’s head, become all-inclusive. “Pleasing your son turns you on” meant, to her, that nothing else did, and so to add to Marion’s joyless existence, she couldn’t even find relief in masturbation. Any time she tried, her mind turned to her son, and so that part of her life was soon shut off as well.
Raised with a sexless, bitter mother, Tom could easily have become a shadow, a weakling. But again the family impressed me, and Tom grew up into a confident and self-assured young man. He grew up to be harder than he would have been, but his mother’s abrasive way of raising him just made him stronger.
And so the first 13 years of Tom’s life after I encountered his mother, were spent angry and resentful, feeling unloved and unwanted. His mother’s years were spent miserable, hating herself, and forced to be constantly cruel to the one person she loved in the world.
The taxi pulled into Mrs Page’s house. She paid the fare, and led me inside by the cock. I mentally explored the house as soon as we entered, and was surprised to discover Tom laying awake in the room next to his mother’s.